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As kids and high school and college students head back into training for fall sports, new research offers a hard warning. A single season of playing football can cause small collisions that lead to worrisome changes in the brain regardless of whether a player actually got a concussion or even had signs of injury, says new research published in this month's Journal of Neurotrauma.

Researchers fitted 45 players from one local high school football team with helmet sensors and followed them during the 2012 playing season. The players were given MRI scans at the beginning and end of the season. Then technology known as the Head Impact Telemetry System (HITS) recorded impacts detected by the helmet sensors and tallied a risk weighted cumulative exposure (RWE) for each player.

The results showed that white matter changes and abnormalities were detected that directly correlated with the number and strength of impacts registered by the helmet sensors.

Even one season of playing high school or college football causes brain damage, study shows. (photo: wikipedia)

It's important to note that during the time period studied, none of the players suffered an actual clinical concussion or serious injury and did not necessarily show any signs that there was a problem. In other words, these changes were invisible.

The study adds to a growing body of research showing that playing contact sports results in brain changes independent of symptoms, noted author Alexander K. Powers, MD, of Wake Forest University.

Powers is on a self-described mission to wake parents and the public up to the risk of brain injury to kids, teens and young adults from participating in contact sports. "It’s hard to imagine your child as a disabled, middle-aged man, but repeated concussions could put a child at risk for such crippling conditions as early onset dementia, Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders that require neurosurgery that no one wants to think about on the sidelines at a football game," he writes, in an article for Wake Forest Baptist Health.

Powers cites statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that 135,000 kids between 5 and 18 are treated for sports-related brain injuries in emergency departments every year. "Most of these injuries are concussions, and the children recover," he writes. "But the prognosis for children who suffer repeated concussions, even mild ones, is unknown."

The study, titled Abnormal White Matter Integrity Related to Head Impact Exposure in a Season of High School Varsity Football, was published online in the Journal of Neurotrauma on July 14th after being presented at the 82nd Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) in April.